'Dr Frankenstein' sold guns to Aussies

A MAN dubbed the "Dr Frankenstein of weapons" has been arrested in Canada for altering guns to make them more lethal and shipping them to Australia and the US.

IT is alleged Bradley Michael Friesen, 37, illegally converted weapons, including Glock revolvers and machine guns, to silence them, increase their firepower or turn them from semi to fully-automatic.

Friesen's arrest, and a display of his alleged arsenal of improvised weapons, were revealed at a press conference in Vancouver on Thursday. Friesen was arrested on July 17 when he went camping with his five-year-old son in Osoyoos, British Columbia, near the US border. When authorities swooped on Friesen at the camping ground, the boy was in a car booster seat with an unloaded sub-machine gun at his feet and gun parts underneath his booster, police allege. "As a parent, I find this absolutely appalling," Canada's Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit sergeant Lindsay Houghton said on Thursday.
Friesen, who had a 2003 attempted murder with a firearm conviction and was under a lifetime firearm ban, had been under surveillance by US and Canadian authorities since May. "It did not take long before he was observed mailing packages of auto sears (a part converts a semi into a fully automatic weapon) and silencers to addresses in Canada, the US, and Australia," Houghton said. It is alleged Friesen had a workshop where he was able to convert guns, including a semi-automatic AR-15 assault rifle into fully automatic. The US plans to extradite him to Arizona. The announcement of Friesen's arrest came just four days after Kentucky man Adam Bunger was sentenced to two years' jail in the US for hiding an assault rifle in a DVD player and a 9mm pistol in an Xbox console and posting them in the mail to customers in Australia.

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